Changing face of Worcester

Iwas riding along Gold Star Boulevard with my niece the other day when I remarked “I remember when this was all one big swamp.”

“What?” she exclaimed in disbelief as she looked at the string of office buildings, auto dealerships, medical clinics, etc.

When you look at bustling Gold Star Boulevard today, it does seem improbable. But it is a fact that, 60 years ago, the area from Glennie Street to Millbrook Street was a big wetland. Flocks of Canada geese dropped in there every fall on their journey south. Acres of cat-o-nine-tails and sedge grass bloomed every summer. There may have been muskrats hiding in the lush growth. The filling and reconstruction of the area changed that part of Worcester for all time. Chadwick Square would never be the same. I doubt if that kind of development could be done today with all the new regulations about wetlands.

I began to think about other topographical changes that I remember in the Worcester landscape. One was near Great Brook Valley, at the intersection of Lincoln Street and Route 12. Hard to believe, but that whole industrial area on the eastern side was part of the huge pig farm that the city used to operate. Hundreds of pigs wallowed in the muddy spots and were fed there daily with garbage collected by Worcester sanitation trucks. When the wind blew from the east, the golfers at the Worcester Country Club were much annoyed. That odiferous enterprise was not phased out until the 1930s, when the city built its first incinerator.

And then, of course, there was Lincoln Square. It had been a problem from the start in the 1600s, when the brook from Indian Lake cut it in twain. Various inadequate bridges were built over the decades, but flooding was a perennial problem. The brook eventually was channeled underground into a huge rock-lined storm sewer.

When I first saw Lincoln Square 80 or so years ago, the brook was gone but it still was an awkward intersection, dominated by train tracks that bisected it. Traffic between Highland Street and Belmont Street was stopped daily when the 5 p.m. freight train made its leisurely way across. Fire engines were sometimes held up for precious minutes. The square itself was cluttered. The old Salisbury mansion sat on the northern end.

Things improved in the 1930s when the Memorial Auditorium was built. To make way for that, the Salisbury mansion was moved up Highland Street to its current location. I recall seeing the old house jacked up on timbers and being hauled up Highland Street by big trucks. I was there when the World War I monument was dedicated. My uncle, Admiral Ralph Earle, president of WPI, was the main speaker.

Various plans for changing the square were proposed, but none made sense. Then, in a stroke of inspiration, the city hired Ole Singstad, the master tunnel builder from Norway. Mr. Singstad had engineered tunnels all over the world, including the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, the first two tubes of the Lincoln Tunnel, the Callahan Tunnel in Boston and many more.

He looked at the layout and quickly came up with a plan — a tunnel for the railroad, a tunnel for north-south traffic, an underpass between Summer Street and Lincoln Street and a new system of traffic lights. That plan has since been modified, but it went a long way toward solving Lincoln Square’s main problems. I wish they had let old Ole have a crack at Kelley Square. He might have recommended a tunnel from Water Street to Millbury Street.

I recall other changes in Worcester’s topography over the last 80 years. The old Army’s Battery B — just a big field at the top of Fowler Street — was taken over by the city for its new airport, which opened in 1946.

A smaller change took place on George Street, now used for the annual Major Taylor climb. Major Taylor made history in the1890s by riding his bike up it, from Main Street to Harvard Street, a feat then believed impossible. George Street today is still steep, but not as steep as it was before Harvard Street was lowered by 15 feet or so. That cut away the top 20 feet or so of George Street, which was the steepest part. We once drove up it in our old Overland just so my brother could boast that he’d done it. He had to shift into first gear and even then it was a grind to travel that last 20 feet.

The old fairgrounds was another spot now unrecognizable. It was a big field just south of Norton Company and it ran right up to the shore of Indian Lake. The first airplane to land in Worcester used it. The circus made its annual visit there, and so did the old New England Fair, a notable event in those days.

There have been other changes in the last 80 years or so. The view up Castle Street, for example. In those days the hill above was crowned by the old Oread Institute, Eli Thayer’s college for women, one of the first in the country. It looked like a medieval fortress.

And there were others too numerous to be recalled by this old brain.

Suffice it to note that the topography of Worcester has changed a lot since the time of Daniel Gookin.